Cognos, a business intelligence and performance management solutions vendor has announced it has completed the acquisition of Applix, Inc. a publicly held company based in Westborough, Massachusetts and an industry leader in analytics.

The merger occurred on October 25, 2007. All remaining outstanding Applix shares have been converted into the right to receive $17.87 per share in cash. Applix is now an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Cognos."The Cognos/Applix combination is a great fit strategically and culturally. Our position as the world's leading independent provider of performance management solutions is now stronger than ever," says Rob Ashe, Cognos CEO. "We've brought together an industry leader in performance analytics with the experts in performance management. We've extended our leadership position in financial performance management (FPM). We've created the broadest performance management solution offering in our market. And we have advanced our place as the number one innovator in performance management with the addition of a world-class, patented 64-bit, in-memory, multi-dimensional server."At the same time, we've brought together two teams that share the same passion for innovation and commitment to customer success. We've added another 200 performance management experts to an already very strong Cognos team – further solidifying our position as the experts in performance management," Ashe says."IDC estimates the worldwide market for packaged applications for Financial Performance and Strategy Management at almost $2 Billion for calendar 2007. A key emerging segment of this market is the area of profitability management applications, which is evolving from a 'build' to a packaged applications market as organisations request vendors to deliver out of the box profitability management functionality," says Kathleen Wilhide, research director of BMP and GRC solutions at IDC."Packaged profitability applications currently represent about 20% of the FPSM market, and IDC estimates that the market is much larger when considering solutions that organisations build with BI tools. Cognos is well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity with the addition of Applix."The acquisition of Applix builds on the proven strength of Cognos 8 Planning, Cognos 8 Controller, and Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. Applix extends the Cognos solution to address financial performance analysis and optimisation, including new solution areas such as profitability, sales mix, and price/volume variance analysis. Customers get a strong, self-service solution to develop and deploy financial analytics across their organisation. Applix is recognised as a leader in the financial analytics market for its innovative financial OLAP server. The company's patented, 64-bit, in-memory multidimensional server has a proven track record in financial performance management. Applix has also been recognised by numerous industry and analyst groups for being a technical and strategic leader in the marketplace, including being positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of Gartner's CPM Magic Quadrant.The company and its global network of partners help more than 3 000 customers worldwide manage their business analytics needs. Customers range across a broad variety of industries including insurance, financial services, banking, healthcare, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, manufacturing, consumer goods and retail.